Crafting, parenting and getting my geek on.

Tag Archives: goals

You know how people sometimes pick a word for the year? Or a theme? I tried to think of a word that would encompass everything I’ve been feeling, the direction I wanted to go and what I want to bring into my life. It’s a tricky business. You want your word to be positive, motivating and meaningful to you so that you won’t just give up the whole thing by February. I kept coming back to ‘light’ which is is terribly vague, isn’t it? I’m keeping it though and adding ‘lighten up’.

Between the word and the little phrase I think I have all of my bases covered for what I want to achieve in 2016 and what I want to carry forward with me. In a literal sense, I want more light in my life and my home – I have plans to re-paint a room or two with lighter colours (or white!) and to do some major re-organization and de-cluttering to make the spaces look and feel lighter. This goes for the side yard of our house, too. I want to clear it up and take down an old bit of fence that’s doing nothing but holding up a half dead wisteria. I’d like that space to be more usable and friendly for The Kid to run around in.

I’m also going to be focusing on my health and fitness this year with a goal to losing at least 50lbs (yikes) and therefore physically lightening myself. My desire to lose the weight isn’t coming from a sense of being uncomfortable in my skin and I’m not looking for a quick fix. If I reach even the half way point of my goal by years end I’ll consider that a win and carry on. The biggest reason for wanting to see some changes physically is to hopefully help my fertility. It’s been a struggle, going through infertility and secondary infertility. That struggle has spanned a number of years and a number of dress sizes so I’m not putting all my eggs (ha!) in one basket and hoping that this will suddenly be the magic cure but hey, it can’t hurt, right? I think I’ll add in some acupuncture and maybe give some Eastern medicine a shot (since I’m a little disgruntled with Western medicine at the moment).

And that brings me to the figurative side of my word of the year. After a miscarriage in 2014, another at the start of 2015 and the unexpected death of our youngest cat just before Christmas, I feel like I’ve been carrying so much sadness and grief with me. It’s exhausting. I won’t just be packing that all up and hiding it away but I’m going to make an effort to bring more happiness in and lighten up my heart. I will always, always grieve for my lost babies but I would rather honour their memory by living as happily as I can. And for my daughter, who I am so, so lucky to have, I don’t want her memories of me to be that I was always sad or angry. I don’t expect this process to be easy, especially since we’re still actively trying for a successful pregnancy but I think working on it and acknowledging the feelings when they arise will be helpful.

That feels like kind of a downer note to leave this post on so here’s a photo of a kitten using a laptop.

Hello and welcome to a new year (only 5 days late with that greeting). Welcome also to my blog. I find I have to get re-acquainted with it myself because it’s been so damn long since I was here.

Do I even blog? I hope so. If I plan to tell people I’m a blogger, I should have something solid to back that up. That leads me nicely to goal number one for 2015 (and beyond).

Blog More (or at all, really)

My overarching goal for the year is to breathe life into my Telltale Thread site. Primarily, this is going to mean blogging more and blogging consistently. My problem isn’t wondering what to write about – I write at least 5 new posts in my head a week. What I need to work on is purging those posts from my brain wrinkles and into my computer. If I did that, I’d have numerous drafts ready to go at any time! Unfortunately, time is the one thing I don’t have limitless supplies of (does anyone?). Mother, spouse, crafter, home owner, full-time desk jockey – all these things take up many of my hours. On the upside, knowing what I need to spend time on should be the key to helping me draw up a plan to devote hours where I want to.

Keep a Tally of Finishes

This year I plan to document the projects I’m working on and keep a little file for the finished goods. I think this will fall into place fairly naturally with an increased blogging schedule, so they kind of go hand in hand. I’ll be including all sorts of things in this file, not just sewing/craft projects.

Become an Organized Person

This one might be a bit of a stretch to achieve in one year. I’m a pretty well seasoned procrastinator. Much like Peter Gibbons, I could do nothing, absolutely nothing, and be perfectly content. That’s not going to help me achieve any of the goals on this list, though. To stand a better chance of becoming an organized person (do these people really exist, fully formed, out in the wild?) I’m roping my husband into this goal as well. My current plan of attack for organizational bliss is obtaining one of those ‘mom calendars’ (waiting for the sweet spot of sale time at the Calendar Club*) and writing down EVERYTHING. Chores, bill payment due dates, birthdays, events, etc.

Budget

*this is why I’m waiting for the really good sale. I don’t care what pictures are in the calendar, I just want it to be cheap and large enough for my purposes.

Another one I’m inflicting on the husband. He’s on board though, so that’s half the battle won. We have a basic budget laid out but it will require tweaking as we go along. We’re one year into being home owners and still finding our feet as far as that is concerned. With the costs of a mortgage and daycare being what they are B.C., it can be a bit of a struggle at the best of times, even with two full-time incomes at decent jobs. This is just something we have to be aware of, work on and stick to.

The ‘F’ Word…..Fitness

I’m not joining a gym because I know I won’t go. What I am going to do is set little goals throughout the year and work on intentionally slow progress so that what I do will become habit and will lead to weight loss that I feel I stand a chance of maintaining. My first two goals for this month are no baked goods for breakfast. I’ve gotten into a really bad habit of buying a muffin or brioche with my daily coffee. Like, really bad. To break the habit, I’ll be making coffee at home and taking that. As luck would have it, there was a brand new travel mug in my Christmas stocking that keeps coffee hot for HOURS, so there is my motivation (no more nuking my constantly cold coffee at work). My second small goal for the month is no eating after 8pm. I’ll still have my cup of herbal tea but nothing that involves chewing.
For the year, my general fitness goal will be to strap the running shoes back on and get out there. I’ll be focusing on a slower pace and distance rather than speed. To balance the cardio, I intend to do short sessions of strength training using my body as the weight/resistance. If have to futz around with equipment, it’ll never happen.

To Be Continued…

That’s enough for a new post but I do want to expand on each of these and touch on a few other peripherals. It sounds like a lot to tackle but as one thing kind of naturally feeds off or benefits the next, I have high hopes.

What about you? Do you have lots of goals for 2015 or just one really good one?